In the face of unimaginable horror, Australians have chosen each other. The grief has been immense, but it has been shared. At every corner. Without question.
That is the single most important takeaway that has emerged in the two days since the terror attack on December 14, when two armed gunmen opened fire on a crowd of Jewish Australians celebrating Hanukkah in Bondi, killing 15 people including a 10-year-old girl, and injuring several others. The worst mass shooting in Australia in 30 years.
Across Sydney, and beyond it, Australians have gathered to mourn and to stand with Jewish families. On Monday evening, thousands came together to light candles for Hanukkah at vigils and in their homes. Light over darkness.
We spoke at length about moments of extraordinary courage, too. Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian Muslim father, who intervened unassisted during the attack, tackling one of the gunmen and preventing further bloodshed. His actions were heroic, but his story was quickly embraced as a reminder of the shared humanity that extremists seek to erase.
Today also, two esteemed community leaders, Mr Ron Finkel and Dr Jamal Rifi penned a joint letter. A Jewish leader and a Muslim leader united in grief and resolve. “For almost a decade, we — a Muslim and a Jew — have worked together, in partnership and trust, to advance social cohesion in Australia,” they wrote.
They called “on our governments, institutions and fellow Australians to stand up and be counted — to reach out, to engage respectfully, and to reject those who seek to divide us”.
“Our shared future depends on the strength of the foundations on which we continue to build bridges of harmony, inclusion and trust.”
Their coming together in such public circumstances, so soon after this tragedy occurred was for one reason only. To show that ideological differences do not weaken us and they are not the fault lines our society will fracture along.
This was also demonstrated in a poignant moment last night, when Rabbi Kamins from Emanuel Synagogue and Bilal Rauf from the National Imams Council embraced each other after speaking at the vigil in Bondi.
This is the Australia that has emerged from tragedy.
And yet, former Prime Minister John Howard seems intent on shifting the sentiment.
Today, Howard criticised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for raising the possibility of further gun law reform following the attack, accusing the government of using tragedy as a political “diversion”.
“I do not want this debate post this horrible event to be used, the focus on guns be used as a pretext to avoid the broader debate about the spread of hatred of Jewish people and antisemitism,” Howard said.
He went further to insinuate that the Albanese government’s very late call to endorse Palestinian statehood (which he deemed “needlessly provocative and dumb”) potentially spurred such a violent attack on Jewish Australians here at home.
This leap is not only logically flawed, but profoundly dangerous. It collapses complex global politics into local blame, designed solely to make Australians turn against one another at a time when solidarity is critical.
This, too, is not new.
John Howard’s political legacy is of course defined by a repeated willingness to harness fear as a key leadership tactic.
In the aftermath of September 11, his government blurred the line between security and suspicion, with Muslim Australians often bearing the cost. The Tampa affair and the “children overboard” scandal cast refugees fleeing violence as threats to be feared rather than people deserving compassion. These narratives did lasting damage.
Howard is insisting Australia is ruptured, when communities are actively proving otherwise. He is gaslighting us into fear.
But we can’t let our moral clarity be distorted by political games. In the days, weeks, months and years after this attack, we will continue to stand unequivocally and emphatically with the Jewish community in condemning a blatant act of antisemitic evil carried out by two extremists. We will honour Muslim heroism. We will pay attention to candlelight, not dog whistles.
If there is a diversion taking place, it is not coming from those seeking to confront violence and hatred honestly. It is coming from those grasping frailly to an old political playbook that relies on fear and division, even when Australians are showing that they have a better way forward.